Volume IIII, Issue 5
February 2, 2015
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Word of the Week: sentence
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Dear ,
How
many sentences could you write to describe this picture of one big-eyed little boy named Rhys in the space jammies his Grammy gave him for Christmas? And just how would you shape them?
Much as I love words, each single one has its limits. Ah, but a sentence! You can make it declarative, interrogative,
exclamatory, or imperative. You can make it short or long, simple or complex, silky smooth or rough-hewn.
If you've ever wondered what that mysterious quality called "voice" in when used to describe writing, the secret is hiding in its sentences (or sentence fragments.
So this week, we're going to celebrate the opportunity each day gives us to arrange words into sentences, a joy that Rhys is just beginning to get a glimmer of. (Yes, I do know what a word nerd I am :), in case you were wondering!)
The inspiration for this week's zine came from reading an online article by about.com's Grammar & Composition Expert Richard Nordquist called "Place and Polysyndeton in
Didion's 'Goodbye to All That'." Simply fabulous! Especially since I not only got to reread a part of Joan Didion's 1968 essay about arriving in and departing from New York, but also learn a new word. I never knew that there was a name for using a whole slew of coordinating conjunctions in a sentence (polysyndeton), much less one for omitting them (asyndeton).
More below, along with a sentence-related prompt that will help you craft yourself into a better writer and develop your own writer's voice.
But first, a shout out to that ever-so-good-for-your-writing exercise of diagramming sentences. Here's a great resource, complete with a quote from a fellow word nerd, Gertrude Stein:
"I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences." I wouldn't go quite that far!
Love and light, and happy sentence-shaping,
Maureen Upcoming WordPlay
COASTAL WRITING RETREAT Connect with Your Creativity at the Sunset Inn (Writing—and more—as Renewal and Inspiration) Only three spaces left! Renew yourself and reconnect with your own creativity, whether you are a practicing writer, closet writer, or as-yet-to-pick-up-the-pen writer! The techniques and prompts we’ll use will spur your imagination, and can be used to create nonfiction, fiction, and/or poetry—the choice is yours. $378 for the weekend beginning Friday February 20 through Sunday February 22. The Coastal Writing Retreat includes
writing sessions, two nights’ lodging, two breakfasts and Saturday lunch (hotel tax and Saturday dinner at a local restaurant not included). Additionally, for those who might like to stay another day to work on their writing, or to just enjoy the beach, the Inn is offering to Coastal Writing Retreat participants only, the opportunity to stay Sunday night, February 22, at half price. WHERE: The Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468
WHEN: Friday, February 20 – Sunday, February 22, 2015 TO REGISTER: Contact the Sunset Inn at 888.575.1001 or 910.575.1000 (if you would like to handpick your room, view your choices here first, then call). Because the Inn is holding rooms for you, our participants, they are blocked off as unavailable online. Register soon by phone – this is a popular event and there are only 4 more spaces available. ----------------------------------------------------------------- THE HEALING POWER OF WORDS (Writing As a Healing Process) Only three spaces left! What benefits can writing provide –physically, mentally, spiritually? Are some ways of writing more healing than others? And can we create quality literary work as we heal? In this retreat that incorporates recent discoveries in the field of mind-body-spirit connection and Dr. James Pennebaker’s ground-breaking ideas on writing as a way to move through loss and grief, you’ll learn methods of writing that
help navigate loss and grief on your life path of growth and wholeness. You will choose your ideal balance between community time and solitude as you use writing as a transformational tool in any way that best serves you. And, if you’re looking, you’ll find the genesis of new poetry, creative non-fiction, and/or fiction. Note: Tears honored. Laughter likely. Inspiration guaranteed. WHERE: The Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468
WHEN: Friday, February 27 – Sunday, March 1, 2015 TO REGISTER: Contact the Sunset Inn at 888-575-1001 (if you would like to handpick your room, view your choices here first, then call). Because the Inn is holding rooms for you, our participants, they are blocked off as unavailable online. Register soon by phone — this is a popular event and there are only 4 more spaces available. ----------------------------------------------------------------- SPRING WRITING
RETREAT (Writing as Renewal / Creating New Writing / Tools for a Writing Life) Renew and delight yourself. The Spring Writing Retreat is an opportunity to create new pieces of writing and/or new possibilities for our lives. Enjoy various seasonal prompts; they elicit beautiful material that can be shaped into essays, poems, stories, or articles. After a communal lunch, you’ll have private time which can be used to collage, work with a piece of writing from the morning, or play with a
number of other writing prompts and methods. You’ll take home new ideas, new drafts, and new possibilities. $97 includes lunch and supplies. WHERE: South Charlotte area. Details will be provided upon registration.
WHEN: Saturday, March 28th, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
TO REGISTER: To register securely online with
your credit card, click here. To pay with a check via mail, email info@wordplaynow.com for instructions. More WordPlay opportunities here.
Joan Didion, Miami Book Fair International, 2005, photo from Miami Dade College
Archive
Because I'm passing along Richard Nordquist's observations
on "Place and Polysyndeton in Didion's 'Goodbye to All That'," I've marked the conjunctions that
make the third sentence polysyndetic. You'll note that there are six "ands" in this one sentence, and if you're wondering, that's six out of 98 total words. This sentence is a masterpiece of composition! And you may also note that it's followed by a sentence of just five simple words -- fewer than the number of "ands" in the sentence that precedes it, a perfect example of varying sentence structure. Read and enjoy...
From "Goodbye to All That"*
by Joan Didion
It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. I can remember now, with a clarity that makes
the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was. When I first saw New York I was twenty, and it was summertime, and I got off a DC-7 at the old Idlewild temporary terminal in a new dress which had seemed very smart in Sacramento but seemed less smart already, even in the old Idlewild temporary terminal, and the warm air smelled of mildew
and some instinct, programmed by all the movies I had ever seen and all the songs I had ever heard sung and all the stories I had ever read about New York, informed me that it would never be quite the same again. In fact it never was. Some time later there was a song on all the jukeboxes on the Upper East Side that went "but where is the schoolgirl who used to be me," and if it was late enough at night I used to wonder that. I know now that almost everyone wonders something like
that, sooner or later and no matter what he or she is doing, but one of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.
*From Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion’s first collection of essays (Simon and Schuster,
1968
This essay of Didion's can be found online in its entirety. It's a beauty.
And if you find
yourself wishing you could write this well, you are not alone -- so do I. And so does author of Everyday Sacred Joan Bender, who wrote in it that "During the five years it took for me to write Plain and Simple, I had to keep reminding myself EVERY day not to spend time wishing I could write like Joan
Didion." (She went on to share that when she met Didion -- in New York, no less, at an American Booksellers Association, and shared this with her, Didion responded, “And I always wish I could write like Henry James.”
Of course it's important to write like ourselves, not someone else. And yet there's much we can learn from the example of writers who really know their way around a sentence. Want to WordPlay? Check out this week's bonus prompt.
WordPlay Now! Writing Prompt This is WordPlay -- so why not revel in the power and potential of one good word after another? This week, it's "sentence." PROMPT 1:
Do you believe "it is easy to see the beginning of things, and harder to see the ends"? Write about the beginning and end of any experience -- time living in a particular city, a job, a relationship, a trip, etc. from your own perspective, or from the perspective of another person or character. Play with the shape and length of your sentences a bit as you write. You may even want
to try some polysyndeton or asyndeton.
BONUS PROMPT:
Try a word-substitution exercise: take a beautiful sentence written by someone else and write a sentence that uses the exact same parts of
speech in the exact same order. For example, using "It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends." I could write, "You are quick to ravel the mysteries of stars, and slower to ravel the certainties." (Hmm... where did that come from and what does it mean? A hazard of this prompt.)
Even if you don't come up with sentences in your writing, it will give your brain a good work out! And help you to expand your own syntax. (if you take on doing this with a 98-word sentence, you have my undying admiration!)
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MAUREEN RYAN GRIFFIN, an award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, is the author of Spinning Words into Gold, a Hands-On Guide to the Craft of Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You, and two collections of poetry, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. She believes, as author Julia Cameron says, "We are meant to midwife dreams for one another."
Maureen also believes that serious "word
work" requires serious WordPlay, as play is how we humans best learn -- and perform. What she loves best is witnessing all the other dreams that come true for her clients along the way. Language, when used with intentionality and focus, is, after all, serious fuel for joy. Here's to yours! |
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